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The inception of Blue Spark Studio in 1997 came in response to Brzozowski feeling that he was a small, underpaid fish in a not-so-fresh pond. As a struggling art director and minor partner in a Van Nuys design firm, he decided to be true to his lifelong philosophy: if you're not happy with your work, something needs to be changed. "I was working way too many hours and I wasn't convinced I was really going to obtain what my partners were promising me," he says. So after renting a small office space in Marina Del Rey, Brzozowski opened shop with only a few contacts. "Shortly after the phone started to ring," he says. "Happy clients switching jobs is generally a good thing." Over the years BlueSpark Studios, a full service design studio, has employed up to five full-timers. The happy client rooster has grown to include such heavy hitters as Microsoft, Fox Broadcasting, Sierra Studios, Sony Online Entertainment, and TDK Mediactive. Brzozowski spoke about keeping it simple and why he's going back to working solo by phone from his Santa Monica studio.
One summer during college my father told me to get a job. I stumbled across Accu Weather, which was looking for a computer graphic artist for television graphics. It ended up being a full-time salaried job. At that time computers were just starting to take hold in the industry and it ended up being perfect timing. Did you decide to give up film? Actually, I moved out here to California to pursue film. I worked in the art department on some movies-of-the-week and music videos. It was tough breaking in and I got frustrated with the politics and went back to design because I knew I could get work. How has your training and experience in film influenced your design? It's in the thinking. You learn to think in different terms and you are a little more adaptable to how you can approach different problems. I do a lot of print, film, and video. They have the same sensibilities as far as composition, balance and color are concerned. I look at it all being tied together, sometimes loosely. There are threads that run through them all. Each of those facets of creativity teaches you different angles and approaches to different solutions or problems. If you explore all those things you are going to be a better thinker, a better problem solver. You're going to be able to come up with different ideas to solve the problem because you can make those connections.
I actually have always kept my hands in film, doing short films with friends of mine over the years. I recently did some of the design work and motion graphics work on The Stepford Wives and for some spots on Fox Sports Network. Actually downsizing will give me the flexibility to do a lot of different projects. It's amazing how the print stuff has kind of gone away but the video and motion work is falling into my lap right now. There is quite a range in the projects you've done over the years. Is there one you feel best illustrates what you can do? Yes, I think the Escape Factory Identity System. They were a game developer. They actually haven't survived; they went out of business but the "identity" that we did for them was tremendously successful. The business cards you did for the Escape Factory received a regional design award from Print Magazine, and was featured in "Best of business card design Volume VI." What was the concept? We went through the whole logo development process with them when they were first trying to find office space. We created a back-story that was completely fictional to support the concept that we were putting forward as their identity. All of the business cards have scribble on the back of them as if someone was trying to write notes. Each individual's back had a different 'log' entry on the back. If you collected all the business cards and put them in the right order you would have the entire story. On the back of the letterhead is another big part of the story but it is written backwards and is blurry - like it was wet on a notepad and then transferred onto the back of the paper. That's basically the story.
Yes, the idea came out of the logo originally. The Escape Factory logo we created was a Zeppelin factory ship, this fantastic thing that traveled to distant places and happened to land in Seattle at one time. The cards almost look like employee identification cards: Very industrial looking but they have an admission stamped to the port of "Emerald City," which is what they called Seattle. It was like a snippet in time of how they ended up in Seattle. They were also in other places. We created a whole mythology that we basically built behind the name of the company that didn't exist when they actually named it. Whose work do you admire? There are a lot of people who are really good at what they do, and like everything and everyone else, sometime you really nail it and sometimes you kinda suck. So I suppose I admire everyone's work when they nail it and sympathize when they suck. What do you do to keep yourself inspired? I take time off and try not to think about work. Then when I come back it's fresh because I've missed it a little. It avoids the burnout factor. I've been so busy lately I need to follow this philosophy soon. - Contributed by Mary-Beth Holland >> See more work from Blue Spark Design >> See other member spotlights on the member spotlight index >> Find out more on how to become an altpick.com member |
